WSB-TV newsfilm clip of a mass meeting held at First Baptist Church where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. encourages nonviolence during a riot outside, Montgomery, Alabama, 1961 May 21

WSB-TV newsfilm clip of a mass meeting held at First Baptist Church where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. encourages nonviolence during a riot outside, Montgomery, Alabama, 1961 May 21

Date:

1961 May 21

Description:

In this WSB newsfilm clip from First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama on May 21, 1961, participants at a mass meeting sing a hymn, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. encourages nonviolence while a riot goes on outside.

The clip begins with the audience singing "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms." As Dr. King stands at the podium, a man takes his picture. King informs the audience that members of the National Guard are on their way to Montgomery to protect the church from the mob outside and asks people to stay inside the church. He also encourages the audience to remain nonviolent to achieve "the moral victory."

On May 4, 1961, two groups of students trained in nonviolence left Washington D.C. bound for New Orleans on a "Freedom Ride," an attempt to test the 1960 United States Supreme Court ruling outlawing segregation in travel between states. The groups were ambushed in Anniston, Alabama on May 14; one of the groups was attacked again in Birmingham. Alabama state troopers, sent after negotiations between state leaders and officials at the Department of Justice, and student reinforcements from Nashville protected the Freedom Riders on their journey from Birmingham to Montgomery on May 20. However, local police who were supposed to protect the riders in Montgomery were not at the bus station when the travelers arrived, and rioting white crowds beat the riders, newsmen, and federal officials at the scene. King flew to Montgomery May 21 for a mass meeting held in Reverend Ralph D. Abernathy's First Baptist Church. Rioting white crowds outside kept the congregation in the church until four-thirty the next morning when Alabama National Guard trucks transported the African Americans home. Further negotiations between state and federal officials moved the Freedom Riders from Montgomery, Alabama to Jackson, Mississippi where the original group of Freedom Riders and their reinforcements were arrested and jailed in Parchman Penitentiary, ending the Freedom Ride before it reached New Orleans.

Title supplied by cataloger.

The Civil Rights Digital Library received support from a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for digital conversion and description of the WSB-TV Newsfilm Collection.